Budget/Trip Updates

As I’m paying one of our trip apartment’s remaining budgets, I’m looking at our finances and am both happy and proud to say we are in good shape. I didn’t quite meet the personal savings goal that I that I had for myself; but after the fact that I had about $250 in unexpected dental work, I’m about $600 shy of where I wanted to be. And since I knew that for me/us, saving 30% was a bit of a push; overall I’m pretty happy with my savings.

As of today we already have more than half of the planned spending for our trip complete. With that, overall we are ~$850 UNDER what I had budgeted for the total trip. The majority of the savings comes from having decided to rent apartments instead of booking hotels.

Another big savings, which was also a disappointment is that we won't be going to a Chelsea or Arsenal Premiere League Soccer/football game. The dates of the Arsenal came changed and now the Chelsea game may change depending on the FA Cup (Ben has played soccer all of his life and we both agreed this was a 'must' for our trip). FA Cup semi-finals are the Saturday we're in England, but we can't find a reputable site selling tickets. Thus, we've settled for a game on Wednesday between lesser known teams. There are some benefits to this though. First is that we'll have that Saturday to spend time with Mr. Sister now and two is that these tickets (purchased yesterday) were WAY cheaper. I had budgeted $150 each for Premiere League tickets and we paid just $101 TOTAL. Granted, it's not big name teams, but it's still meeting the goal.

Of course we’ll see if we add in extra activities and if my food/drink estimates were close, but I am feeling good about the trip, financially at least! We'll see how packing goes this weekend.